


won't be long

by RowboatCop



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: :P, Day 6, F/M, Gen, Joey Gutierrez pov, Joey is a delightful cinnamon roll, Missing Scenes, SO, SORRY IT'S NOT VERY SHIPPY, Secret Warriors - Freeform, There's no plot, but no one other than skoulson people will want to read it, everybody loves Joey, just everybody being nice to Joey okay, skoulsonfest2k16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 14:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5931859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/pseuds/RowboatCop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or: Five times Joey leans on someone on the team, and one time someone leans on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	won't be long

1.

Daisy curls onto the couch beside him, once they flip off the news, and tells him her story — or at least, some of the highlights of it.

Being orphaned, finding her parents, changing, being orphaned again.

“Wow, and I thought I had it bad.”

The worst thing _his_ mother ever did was turn into a Fox News junkie, and she’s been really awful — hasn’t treated him like a son since he came out — but it’s not nearly so bad as Daisy’s story.

“It’s not a competition,” she reminds him gently, taking a long pull off her beer.

“I know.” He appreciates that about her, that she’s clearly here sharing her own shitty life story out of real solidarity, not out of a desire to show him up. He’s known enough people like that, people who can’t let you feel your own damn feelings, people who have to make their feelings bigger than yours.

She’s not like that.

“And it’s not all been bad,” Daisy tells him, smiling a little. “The people here? They’re...family.”

“That’s how I feel about my friends. The family you make, right?”

“Yeah. The family you choose.”

They clink bottles, and she smiles — the first real smile he’s seen from her since he met her, probably, the first one where it looks like maybe the weight of the world isn’t about to crush her flat.

“Will I get to see them again?”

The question has been eating at him since she let it drop that he’d never get his normal life back.

“I’ll do my best. Even if it can’t be normal, I promise that I —”

She cuts herself off, looking at him with big brown eyes that have seen more of the world than a girl her age probably should have. (He wonders what his eyes looked like, ten years ago when he was twenty seven, her age, and his world hadn’t fallen apart yet. But then, it was also too bound up in fear and lies to go anywhere, either.)

“I’ll do my best.”

And he believes her. He wonders if that’s part of her alien super powers, getting people to believe her.

Except of course it’s not, it’s just her, he can tell. It’s the way she _means it_ , the way she wants him to have his found family, the way she cares.

He nods, a little solemn.

“And in the meantime, I’m not alone.”

“You’re not,” she promises, like this is the most important thing to her, that he know this — that he’s not alone.

“I guess I didn’t make the best first impression on your partner. Or the doctor.”

“You did fine. It’s not you that has to make a good first impression.”

Joey smiles.

“Your partner seems a little...intimidating,” he suggests. Paul was into the bodybuilding scene, but he had nothing on Mack.

“He just comes across as serious. He’s actually really nice, though.”

“Once he trusts you,” Joey asserts.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“But maybe that’s good. You know that once he’s got your back, he’d go to the end of the world for you?”

“He would,” she agrees. “Even if he’d complain about it.” She smiles at something he can’t see, some memory. “Mack is a good guy.”

“I’ve known a lot of people who people told me were good guys, but they weren’t always good _to me_ , you know?”

“Mack won’t be one of those,” she promises, eyes locked on his.

“He’s not wrong to not trust me,” Joey acknowledges as he drains the last of his beer. “I’m a weapon, now.”

“We’re more than weapons,” Daisy cuts in. She says it not as something with grand finality — not something she’s certain of — but rather something she must tell herself a lot. Something she needs to believe. “Weapons don’t have a conscience.”

“And we do.”

“We do,” she agrees.

“But you’re not sure of me yet, right? You have to make sure I won’t…”

“If it were someone else in here and you were out there, isn’t that what you would want? To make sure it’s not someone who’s going to…”

“Go around burning out people’s hearts? Yeah.”

She’s told him a lot, _probably_ more than she should have, about the terrifying way the world is now and the terrifying lack of experience they’re bringing to the whole process.

But she doesn’t like secrets, doesn’t want to keep him in the dark about things, she says.

And yeah, she laid on a little too much a little too fast — though he asked for it, he guesses — but he likes her candor. He likes the way that she’s treated him like a person through all of this, even the parts that leave him not feeling much like a person.

“I understand,” he promises her.

Partly it’s just him — reassuring someone else when he’s the one locked up in a high tech prison after finding out he’s part alien, that’s the kind of thing Paul would have said was _so Joey_ — but partly it’s her. She’s the kind of person you don’t want to disappoint, the kind of person you want to look out for.

“So, who am I supposed to meet next?”

“Coulson,” she answers. “The Director of SHIELD.”

“And what’s he like?”

“Pretty great,” she answers, a little smile like she’s talking about a friend and not the boss of whatever weird government agency he’s fallen into.

 

2.

“Phil Coulson,” the man in question introduces himself when he knocks at the door of the little white room the next morning.

He brings breakfast.

“Sk-Daisy told me you’re a fan of donuts, but Agent Morse thought you might prefer a healthier option,” he explains as he pulls out a box of some kind of gourmet donuts, some plain 0% greek yogurt, and some diced strawberries.

No one’s brought him breakfast since the breakup, and it’s kind of nice, sitting down at a table with food that looks good instead of washing vitamins down with a protein shake at the counter — all he’s been doing with his mornings lately. It’s been some weird kind of breakup ritual, like reminding himself of the relationship, maybe like trying to turn himself into the person who could have made it work.

But whatever, he’s here now. He’s here and part alien and _melting buildings_ or something, so what the fuck does it matter if he has a donut.

He takes a bite out of something custard filled and dusted with powdered sugar, imagines Paul grimacing at the thought of all the delicious, delicious carbs.

It feels rebellious, enjoying something his ex would cringe at, and maybe like a better breakup ritual than what he’s been doing, actually.

“I just wanted to check up on you. See how you’re feeling.”

“I’ve been better,” Joey tells him, softly sarcastic but too honest, after swallowing his mouthful of custard and fried dough.

Coulson nods and looks at him with big, friendly eyes. He has the kind of face you want to trust. Handsome, but not aggressively so; blue eyes that make you think he’s probably seen enough bad things that he’s empathetic.

Joey frowns at that, at himself for passing out trust too easily. Daisy said this guy is _pretty great_ , but he’s trying to be wary.

Daisy, at least, is like him, so it makes sense that he wants to trust her.

“When Daisy...changed,” Coulson stumbles over the word, like he still doesn’t know how to talk about this, a reminder that this team is still trying to figure out exactly what they’re doing, “my biggest fear was about what happened when she tried not to hurt other people with her powers.”

“What happened?”

“She turned them inward.”

And Joey has gotten a taste of her powers, has watched her roll a police car down a city block, her been tossed against a wall by them. He can’t imagine what happens when you turn that destructive force inward.

“She hurt herself?”

“She broke the bones in her hands and arms. Hairline fractures all the way up.”

Joey exhales.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I don’t know what it might look like if you turn the ability to melt metal inward. We don’t understand what you can do yet.”

“So you’re telling me not to try to hold it in.”

“Yes,” Coulson agrees. “The point of this room is that you can’t accidentally hurt anyone. If you lose control, it’s contained. It’s…”

“It’s meant to make me feel safe.”

“I know it probably doesn’t feel that way. And of course it keeps _us_ safe as well. But I can already tell that you’re like _her_ , that the worst thing for you will be —”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

And he doesn’t. It’s the worst part of all of this, worse than losing his life, worse than losing his friends, worse than losing his job and his support network and his found family. He hurt people, and he could do it again.

“I know.”

Coulson says it with such certainty that it makes Joey’s eyes sting because this is what he needs right now, he needs someone to believe in him, to trust him.

And here’s two.

His oncoming breakdown is mercifully interrupted by a knock at the door. Coulson stays seated, behaves like this isn’t his room, isn’t his place, and lets Joey be the one to stand up and usher Daisy inside.

She’s carrying two mugs of coffee, and she stops short at the sight of Coulson sitting at the little white table before giving him a slow smile.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she greets him, though everything about her face and her voice says she’s also very happy to see him here.

“Just came to meet our guest. I brought doughnuts.”

He holds up the box, opening the lid in offering.

“Ohh, he brought you the good stuff, Joey,” she teases. “I’m jealous.”

She takes a seat at the table and selects an eclair, which she sets on a napkin.

“Did my secret family grilled cheese recipe not count as the good stuff? I don’t make that for just anyone, you know.”

It’s a playful kind of banter, but he can see on it on Coulson’s face — there’s something here that matters.

Joey watches, kind of fascinated, as Daisy turns her eyes down to stare at her eclair for a moment, a little smile visible before she looks back up — back to an impassive face, though with dancing eyes.

“No, that was good stuff.”

They lock eyes, and Joey wonders if they’re even aware he’s in the room anymore.

He looks down at the table, brushing his finger through powdered sugar and trying not to feel like an awkward third wheel.

Daisy is the one that breaks it, that looks away and back over at him, flustered and flushed before she swallows and hits him with a friendly smile and waves her eclair in the air.

“Breakfast of champions, right?”

 

* * *

 

 

He blames it on the fact that he was really up in his own head, his own worries, that he’s surprised by the absence of a left hand when Coulson stops by later that day.

And he’s a little ashamed of himself, but he can’t quite stop staring at the metal getup on Coulson’s forearm.

“That’s where the prosthetic attaches,” Coulson tells him, and Joey nods.

“I didn’t notice before. How did you —” He cuts himself off. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

“A few months ago,” Coulson answers, brushing it off like it’s nothing, though Joey imagines he can see that it’s not nothing, that it’s definitely _something_. “I caught one of the terrigen crystals, trying to save my team. Those are —”

“The things that Daisy’s mother had.”

“She told you about that,” Coulson nods, looking vaguely worried, and Joey wonders whether he’s worried about Daisy having shared this information.

He gets the sense that maybe Coulson would be more closed off than Daisy, that maybe he’d be the type to want to keep him in the dark about big stuff — at least until they’re more sure of him.

“Yeah.”

Coulson nods, though, and Joey realizes that he’s wrong, that it’s not a matter of being worried about secrecy.

“It’s good she’s talking about it to _someone_.”

He’s jealous, Joey realizes. Not angry jealous, but sort of hurt that Daisy isn’t sharing with him.

And yeah, he wonders again what exactly their relationship is.

“It was a traumatic day for both of you, then,” he offers. “Maybe she doesn’t want to be the one to bring it up.”

Joey wants to roll his eyes a little, at the idea of passing out relationship advice right after he’s been turned into some kind of alien weapon, but the truth is he doesn’t mind. It feels kind of normal, kind of like the world makes sense, kind of like these people aren’t so bad.

“Probably,” Coulson agrees, letting it drop. “I came to let you know that we have someone coming to...talk to you.”

“To evaluate me, you mean. To see if I can be trusted?”

The Director frowns, like he’d very much like to find a different way to phrase things.

“Doctor Garner is a friend, and helping you will be his number one priority,” Coulson promises instead. “I’ve seen him for some of my own issues, and Skye saw him after…”

Joey blinks.

“Skye?”

“Daisy, dammit,” Coulson corrects himself, a deep frown of frustration on his mouth. “Daisy saw him, too. It’s not about a test, I promise.”

 

3.

But Doctor Garner is nice, it turns out.

Again, the kind of face you immediately trust, the kind of face that says he’s only going to look out for you. (And what’s with SHIELD and these handsome trustworthy faces?)

But Joey has had his own history with therapists, with people more invested in an ideal of _normality_ than with helping, and he can’t quite relax.

“It’s okay, Joey. You’re not going to fail, here.”

“Except I might. I mean, what happens to me if you decide I don’t seem good enough?”

“It’s not a matter of good enough. It’s a matter of if you can handle yourself, if it’s safe for you to be out in the world.”

“Well I’m pretty sure it’s not,” Joey snarks.

“Then we’ll figure out what we need to do to get you there.”

Joey sighs.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Why don’t you tell me about what it was like when you changed?”

“I… I was getting ready to leave for work. I was just taking my vitamins and with orange juice, when suddenly…”

“You started to turning to stone?”

“My legs first.” He can feel the sweat on his brow at just the memory. “I thought I was dying.”

He wonders if it counts as dying, actually. The doctor, the blonde woman, made it sound like he had completely _changed_ , and Daisy said something about massive change on a cellular level. As though he’s someone new, now, as though the old Joey Gutierrez is dead.

“And do you remember being...inside of it?”

“No. No, the next thing I remember is it starting to break away, and feeling so _trapped_. I’ve never been claustrophobic, but...”

“It would probably be smart for you to avoid very small spaces for a little while.”

“My room here isn’t exactly enormous.”

“I know. We’re working on it, don’t worry. What happened next?”

“Things around me started...melting. It was all happening so fast, I couldn’t even tell what was happening. I think something caught fire.”

“The team said that the door on your apartment was gone.”

“The hinges melted I think. I knew I had to get out — to get away from where I could hurt people. But…”

“But there were just more people,” Doctor Garner fills in.

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

“I know.”

“And then Daisy showed up.” He shrugs. “I should be glad she got there as fast as she did, before those other guys got me. Or before I melted a whole building or something.”

“And how do you feel about the possibility of that? Of hurting someone, or melting a building?” His eyes narrow a bit as he asks, like this is the big important question, the one that determines his fate. But it’s also obvious.

“Awful,” Joey answers. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.” He can see Doctor Garner relax a little at that, and smile. “If someone could just change me back...”

“As far as we know, that’s not possible,” Doctor Garner tells him.

“I spent so much of my life trying to be _normal_. And I’m finally okay with being me, and then _this_ happens.”

“You’ll learn to accept this as well, Joey. To see this as part of yourself.”

Joey nods once.

“How?”

Doctor Garner smiles at him, more than a little sad.

“I can’t tell you that, unfortunately, but you don't have to face it alone.”

 

* * *

 

 

“How was it?” Daisy asks, stepping through his door after the session with a bag from some nearby burger place.

The greasy, salty scent fills the small room, and Joey's stomach growls loudly. It feels like he's been constantly hungry since he changed, and Daisy warned him about that, but it's still sort of shocking.

“I don’t think it went that well,” he admits, putting aside thoughts of food for a minute. “He seems nice, but I just…”

“I get it,” she shrugs.

“But you like him, Doctor Garner, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” she nods. “I’ve seen _a lot_ of therapists, and he’s definitely the best one.”

“So what did he tell you about me?”

“That you’re not cleared for field work,” she answers, shrugging.

It makes him tense.

“Do I get in a say in whether I want to do field work?”

“Of course!” She jumps, like she’s just realized an error. “My plan here is to get you to a stable place, and then to try to show you what kind of good you can do if you stay here.”

“And if I decide to go?”

“Then you’ll go. I’ll keep tabs on you, make sure no one’s…”

“...coming to put a bullet in my head?”

“Yeah. That.” She smiles, a pained sad little smile, like she’s trying to be cute and comforting but there’s no room for it. “I hope you’ll stay, though.”

Truthfully, he’s not sure that he wants to stay, not sure he wants to be a superhero or whatever it is Daisy has in mind. But it feels kind of good to have someone say that, to know that he can have a place.

“You’ll see,” she promises him. “You’ll see, we may be different, but that doesn’t mean —”

Whatever grand heroic speech she might have given is cut off when her partner the teddy bear, Mack, sticks his head through the door.

“Coulson just called. They need us.”

Daisy nods and rises from her seat on the small couch, looking genuinely concerned.

“Is he okay?”

“Yeah,” Mack answers, and Joey swears he looks a little exasperated. “He’s fine. Just needs us to bring the big rock.”

“We’ll be back,” Daisy announces to him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Joey jokes, getting a half-smile from Daisy before she and Mack leave him on his own to flip on the TV and eat his burgers.

 

4.

Mack is the one who comes back to the room, hours later, carrying two plates.

“I made dinner,” he states by way of greeting when Joey opens the door to let him in.

“Thanks.”

They move to the table, a palpable sense of awkwardness in the air that tends to happen when a near-total stranger shows up at your door. He takes the plate and sets it down, and even though this space hardly feels like home, his hosting skills come into play enough that he grabs two glasses of water from the kitchenette.

When he moves back to the table, Mack has folded himself down into one of the chairs at the tiny IKEA table, and Joey has to smile at how much less physically imposing Mack looks when he’s clearly concerned about breaking the furniture.

“Do you want to sit on the couch?”

Mack looks up at him with raised eyebrows, and then smiles — a slow smile that makes his whole face light up, and Joey’s knees go a little weak. Between all the fear and concern for himself, he hasn’t really had a chance yet to notice what a beautiful man Mack is. He is though — kind eyes and wide smile and nicely balanced features.

“Nah,” Mack smiles through the sound. “I managed to wedge myself in here, I want to make it count.”

Joey laughs and takes his own seat, looks down at the plate of chicken, rice, and green beans in front of him. It’s a basic meal — the kind of thing that Paul used to eat most nights — but there’s something comforting, familiar, about it.

“Thank you,” Joey tells Mack as he takes a bite. “You’ve all been really nice.”

“I realize it’s scary right now. We’re not trying to add to that.”

“I don’t know whether I’m supposed to be more scared of myself or the top secret government organization.”

“You make us sound like Men in Black,” Mack laughs.

“Aren’t you?”

“I never thought of it that way. But I’ve always been more in the development side of things. I barely saw any weird stuff until I joined up with Coulson.”

“You’re a scientist?”

“Mechanic. I build and repair the scary tech devices the engineers design.”

“Like, weapons?”

“Weapons,” he nods. “Cloaking devices. Flying cars.”

“What about alien stuff?”

“I’ve seen some, but I don’t usually get to play with it.”

“Have you met aliens?”

“A few. We had an Asgardian here earlier today.”

“Like Thor?”

“Like Thor.”

Joey sits back and lets out a breath.

“It’s like, you _know_ aliens exist and that they’ve been here, but you never think…”

“Tell me about it,” Mack half-laughs. “I still haven’t gotten used to it.”

“I guess I’m one of the weird alien things now, too.”

Mack looks at him for a long moment, something deep and searching and a little terrifying in his gaze.

“One thing you learn when you work with Daisy is...you are what you decide to be.”

“I didn’t decide to be a weird alien thing.”

“No,” Mack nods, “you didn’t. But you decide what you become now.”

It fortifies him somehow — this thought that whatever has happened to him, he gets to decide what it means, he gets to decide how to react, he gets to decide who he’ll become.

Joey lets out a breath and realizes they’ve been sitting in silence for too long.

“Daisy seems pretty great. Have you worked with her for long?”

Mack smiles, the kind of smile that means that the answer to this question is actually pretty difficult.

“We’ve been partners for few months, but...before that is...complicated. I’ll explain it to you some time if you stick around.”

“The Director, Coulson, he seems good, too.”

“Coulson is a good man,” Mack agrees.

Things go quiet as Joey crunches through greenbeans.

“Are they...an item?”

Mack looks startled by the question.

“No, why?”

“They just seem very…”

“They’re intense about each other,” Mack suggests, like he understands the source of confusion. “That made me nervous at first,” he admits, “but they work well together, and they both care about people.”

“So doing field work under them, it’s a good thing?”

“Yeah. It is. Everything in SHIELD went to hell about two years ago —”

“I remember that.”

He does — the news stories and the scare-mongering before everyone finally settled on some other bad guy, something with an octopus.

“It took a long time for me to trust anyone new after that.”

“But you trust Coulson and Daisy.”

“I do. I won’t say I never disagree with them, but they’re on the right side.”

Joey nods and pushes his plate away.

“I guess I have a lot to think about.”

“You do,” Mack agrees. “But you’ll do fine.”

It feels good, like he has the approval of another person here.

 

5.

“Relax,” Daisy tells him as they stand together in the giant warehouse of a room. “There’s no metal in here except for the filing cabinets. You can’t hurt anything.”

“I could hurt you.”

“You won’t,” she tells him like she believes it, but he still frowns at her. “I’ll knock you out if it seems like you might, okay?”

It should sound threatening or scary, but it’s weirdly comforting to stand next to someone who isn’t afraid of him at all, who doesn’t want to hurt him but definitely won’t let him hurt anyone else.

“Okay,” he agrees, and stretches out his arm towards the cabinets.

“Do you feel them?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “Yeah, I can…”

“What does it feel like?”

“I…”

“Try to take your time, see if you can understand what happens.”

He can’t understand it, not really, but he can _feel_ it. The cabinet melts, and he drops his hand.

“Did you control that?”

“Sort of. I turned it on.”

“Fine tuning comes later,” she agrees.

“Is that how it works for you? Once you learned to turn it on and off…”

“I could play with it.”

“ _Play_.”

He says the word like it’s foreign.

“They can be fun.”

“Not my powers. What can I do? Just destroy things.”

“Can you move the metal, still?”

When he reaches out to feel it again, it goes more molten, but he doesn’t drop his hand — he keeps feeling it, the way it wants to move, the way he might be able to make it move…

“Joey,” Daisy whispers, which is when he realizes he’s closed his eyes. Upon opening them, he sees the molten metal rising, forming something like a spire in the middle of the floor.

Her hand lands on his shoulder and squeezes lightly, and when he drops his hand, his metal tower stays standing.

“I made something,” he breathes — his cheeks hurt from smiling so hard, and his vision clouds over from tears.

“You made something,” Daisy agrees, and she’s smiling at him, too, prouder of him than he can remember anyone being.

“Impressive,” comes a voice from behind them, and he turns to see the blonde woman — the doctor who saw him when he came in — walking into the room.

Daisy’s hand clenches on his shoulder again.

“Yes,” she agrees, “he is.”

And he almost can’t meet either of their eyes.

“Do you think you can control it more?”

Joey’s almost surprised that the blonde doctor is talking directly to him; he's still off balance in this group of people who all seem to see him like a person worth talking to.

“I think so? I…”

“We’re gonna practice,” Daisy tells him, like this is a promise. “You’ll see.”

He nods in agreement.

“Bobbi Morse,” the woman introduces herself to him, and he’s relieved he’s not expected to have remembered her name.

“Hi,” he answers, shaking her hand. “Nice to meet you when I’m not…”

She nods once.

“You’re looking much better.”

“I am. Thanks to Daisy.”

“Thanks to yourself,” Daisy corrects him gently, her her hand still warm and supportive on his shoulder.

“Coulson’s back from his meeting with…” Agent Morse trails off, grimacing, and Joey looks over to see Daisy’s deep frown.

“ _Rosalind_?” She says the name like it’s a curse word, and then seems to master herself. “Right. Okay. I have to go talk to him,” she states.

“I can hang out with Joey,” Agent Morse tells her. “I brought some books I thought he might like.”

She holds up something that looks alarmingly like a textbook, and Joey can’t quite help his frown because he’s pretty sure he didn’t sign up for homework.

“Okay.” Daisy turns to him. “Are you…”

“That’s fine,” Joey agrees, though he’s not entirely sure that it _is_ fine.

But Daisy zips out of the room to get back to the base, and Agent Morse smiles at him encouragingly.

“Does Director Coulson have a girlfriend?”

She laughs at that.

“No, he’s meeting with the head of the ATCU, they —”

“Yeah,” Joey cuts her off. “Okay, she told me. It just seemed like Daisy was…”

“Yeah, well,” she rolls her eyes.

They smile at each other, two people gently mocking the bosses, and then she looks down at the book in her hands.

“I realize you probably don’t want to sit down with a text, but I also thought maybe you’d want to learn a little more about SHIELD.”

Joey blinks at her, but draws in a breath.

“Yeah, I think I would.”

 

+1

It feels like she’s been running for hours, like she _can’t_ stop, like every step she takes becomes a sprint halfway across the island, only to wind up back where she started.

And then _they_ show up — two in black outfits like some kind of spec ops team, plus one older white guy in a suit and tie — and she runs somehow faster.

It’s the guy and a girl in black that chase after her, though, that corner her on a deserted dock, and she’s prepared to try _running_ again when the guy calls out:

“We’re like you.”

And, like, obviously they’re both walking like normal people and aren’t like her at all, but it still gives her pause.

“How?”

She pokes her head out from behind a crate and watches the guy nod at the woman before extending his arm and _melting_ a metal beam lying on the pier.

“Whoa.”

It’s sort of crazy how something that would have probably been terrifying a few days ago is suddenly almost a _relief_.

“We can teach you to control it,” the woman tells her, this encouraging smile that makes you want to believe her.

“You just have to come with us, can you do that?”

The guy asks as he steps cautiously towards her, arm outstretched.

“Yeah,” she answers, takes a leap of faith, and reaches out to take his hand.


End file.
